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“Kim Davis should not be in jail. We are a country founded on Judeo-Christian values, founded by those fleeing religious oppression and seeking a land where we could worship God and live according to our faith, without being imprisoned for doing so.” -Ted Cruz

No. You know what? Fuck off. You, Mr. Cruz, and the rest of the delusional boogeyman-fearing religious right are trying to turn a civil rights matter into a “war on Christianity,” and guess what? You’re full of shit. You’ve been full of shit before, you’ll be full of shit again, and you are absolutely full of shit now.

This country wasn’t founded on “Judeo-Christian values,” it was founded on secular values. Read the constitution, you numb-nutted douchecopter, and realize that there is not one mention of God, Christianity, or Jesus throughout. Not one single time. The founding fathers were not Christians; they were secular deists. Kim Davis is in jail because she is a self-indulgent fuckbag who is mean to gay people, not because she’s “exercising her religious beliefs.”

“Judeo-Christian values” wasn’t what anyone meant in 1776. The US was founded on religious freedom, meaning you can come here and worship whatever the hell god you want, free from oppression. Christian god? Sure. Mohammed? Yep. The Flying Spaghetti Monster? You bet. “Religious freedom” was never intended to be a convenient reworking of “only people who worship the right god in exactly the way we tell you to do, and if you’re rich and white you get a VIP table.”

Christians in the US don’t get to hide behind the “oh, I’m being so persecuted!” defense anymore. That defense is obsolete. The Bible, in all of its misogynistic, hypocritical wisdom, is just a book, not a means by which to discriminate, harass, and deny people of the rights that have been granted to them by a federal court. Do I get to shoot people I don’t like because the Constitution guarantees me the right to bear arms? No. And by the same logic, do I get to walk up to you if you’re saying grace in a family restaurant and tell you to be quiet because you’re offending my ever-so-sensitive atheistic proclivities? No. That’s what freedom of religion means — you can’t use it (or a lack thereof) to be a twat to someone because you can’t stand the thought of someone thinking differently than you do.

So, Mr. Cruz, I’m sure you and the religious right are excited beyond belief to use Davis as the poster child for this hilariously out-of-touch “war on Christianity” you love talking about so much. And you know something? Good. Do it. Parade this bigoted Old Testament god-fearing clown around on every major news network, 24/7. We’ll all watch your continued descent into misguided bigotry and petulant denial of court-mandated civil liberties. We’ll watch as you and Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie and the rest of your horde of slack-jawed, bleary-eyed bullies continues to complain about how gays are destroying the sanctity of marriage while your third marriage fails miserably. Right.

It’s embarrassing to me, as an American, that our would-be leaders would so casually ignore a Supreme Court decision and continue to whine endlessly about their religious beliefs being under attack. This is not in the best interests of the people you claim to represent, Mr. Cruz. For a country that’s as culturally diverse as this is, we’re still scared shitless when minority groups suddenly start getting recognized as human beings. It scared a lot of you shitless during the Civil Rights Movement, and it scares you shitless now.

And guess what? You have absolutely no ground to stand on to justify how you feel. Human beings deserve equal treatment. We should get to marry who we want to marry. That, last I checked, falls under the whole “freedom” thing you’re so hell-bent on protecting. But we love freedom so much in this country, we seem compelled to lock it in a box and put it away where nobody can touch it.

The only explanation to your feelings is you are ignorant at best, and hateful at worst. Bigotry has no place in leadership. I sincerely hope that in another 20 years, we can make progress to the point where equal rights are recognized for everyone, and people like Kim Davis are recognized as being the bigots they are. So if she’s in jail, Mr. Cruz, I understand why that would make you a little nervous.

Part of living in a social amusement park like Capitol Hill is the nonstop excitement. This is sometimes a very entertaining part of this neighborhood, but also a repulsive, brutish reality that would make the average person run screaming in the other direction.

Or, in yesterday’s case, make someone run towards you moments after emptying his bladder on the side of your housing complex.

I turned the corner just in time to see the haggard-looking drunk making no effort to conceal the fact that he was pissing on the back door of the downstairs bar.

“What the FUCK are you doing?!” I blurted.

“Urin…ating,” he said.

“But you’re pissing on the side of our fucking building, you idiot,” I said, realizing that confronting this guy would’ve been a foreign concept to me a couple of years ago.

“Yeah, well, it’ll wash down the storm drain dude, it’ll be….just fine,” he said while swaying back and forth.

“No, ‘DUDE,’ you’re pissing on private property in broad daylight. I’m gonna call the cops and have them haul your ass away so you can show your dick to everyone downtown.”

“Leave me alone man! LEAVE ME ALONE!” he wailed and turned around, giving me a view of more than I ever wanted to see of him.

“Dude, DUDE….I live right down the street, I’ll go home! I’LL GO HOME!”

He began to approach me, waving his arms around frantically and almost dropping his huge can of Icehouse in the process. Thank god the bastard finally zipped, I thought.

At this point, my building’s maintenance guy came out. He saw what was going on and didn’t even hesitate. He grabbed his phone from his pocket and asked if I knew the non-emergency number for the police.

“NO COPS!! NO COPS!!” the drunk shouted. “I’LL GO!!!”

“Go?! You already WENT, you stupid bastard!” I shouted after him as he began to walk away.

“Aaaargh!! I just wanted to empty my bladder!!” he said, accompanied by more flailing. ”

“Shut the hell up, or I’ll follow you home and piss on your rug!!! I’LL DO IT!!!!” I said.

Sensing I had hit my own threshold of Crazy, I ended the conversation by opening the front door to the lobby and walked in. No sense in riling up the locals and risking him shining the Crazy Piss Bandit signal in the sky. He might bring backup, and soon we’d all end up drowning in a sea of raw urine that would no doubt reek of malt liquor.

“What the FUCK,” said the groundskeeper. “Now I have to go out there and wash that off.”

“Want help?” I asked. “I could at least stand guard and poke his eyes out if he comes back.”

“No,” he said with a laugh, “that’s OK. Thanks, though.”

“No problem. Maybe there’s a job for me in security,” I said.

He shrugged and went to the garage for a bucket and mop.

Maybe I’m missing my calling, I thought. Maybe there’s a future for me like Phoenix Jones, except with fewer headlines, trials and pepper spray. Or, maybe my future will be professional writer by day, and masked piss-stopping superhero by night. Wherever there is piss, I SHALL APPEAR.

What would my name be? CockPuncher the Mighty, fighting an eternal war against Piss Bandits of the Urin-nation?

It was an ordinary weekday morning, as far as I could tell — I wasn’t running late, I wasn’t wildly flailing at my alarm clock in a frenzied half-awake attempt to smash it, and I wasn’t tripping over my gigantic cat while hurriedly walking from the bathroom.

I left the house in my normal leisurely fashion. The 545 express bus to Redmond came at pretty much the exact same time every morning, and it always came every eight minutes — give or take, of course. I hadn’t had any reason to be suspicious about arrival or departure times in the past, and it’s always nice to know you won’t be waiting in the morning cold forever. Especially in the company of 10 to 20 socially awkward hipsters who have their iPods turned all the way up in desperate attempts at avoiding eye contact or small talk. (The most amusing part about that, to me, is their desperate attempts to not be awkward only make the entire situation exponentially more awkward by design. But that’s a psychological case study I don’t have the credentials to explore any further.)

The wait time on this particular morning, however, turned out to be a little longer than expected. Said socially awkward hipsters were checking their watches (okay, phones) impatiently, silently huffing under their breath and looking around as if the bus was a ninja hiding behind the bushes.

Fast forward 10 minutes, and the bus finally rolls up, quite noticeably late because of the number of people at my stop. Much to our horror, however, the number of people on the bus easily tripled the number of us sitting at the stop. No matter, I thought. These things happen and plenty of people stand the whole time anyway. Hell, I sit the whole time at work anyway. Might as well stand up and get some…um….exercise. No, wait, that’s not it….oh, fuck, whatever. The point is I didn’t really care about being forced to stand up for the 25-minute commute to the Evil Empire in Redmond.

Right as I stepped off the curb and almost had one foot on board the bus, the door unceremoniously shut in front of me and the bus took off. I exchanged looks with a nerdy-looking guy clinging to a Starbucks beverage helplessly staring out of the glass door. He appeared squished between three people and probably couldn’t even so much as turn around without slapping someone in the crotch with his backpack. My god, I thought, the poor bastard almost looks remorseful to be on that bus.

I shrugged. “Fuck it,” I said out loud to the forsaken people next to me. “I didn’t want to go to work today anyway.”

Walking away from the bus stop, I checked the “OneBusAway” app that I had recently downloaded that gives you real-time updates of buses in the area (oh shut up, it’s convenient) and found that the next 545 wasn’t scheduled to hit our stop for another 10 minutes. Good, I thought. Enough time to go grab a coffee at City Market and come back out.

Once inside the store, which is a good 100 feet from the bus stop, I decided to not fuck around too long and just grabbed a Monster instead of waiting for the espresso machine. Their espresso tastes like death anyway and probably causes face cancer.

Right as I walked out the front door, I discovered I was standing there with the perfect amount of time to witness the 545 turning the corner onto Olive and head for the freeway on-ramp. For the second straight time, I locked eyes with a passenger on the bus; this time an attractive brunette who I was standing next to at the stop earlier. She gave me a look of recognition that said “wow, sucks to be you,” and smiled.

I smiled back while staring incredulously at the giant people-moving vessel that was shunning me for the second straight time. HOW DARE IT MOCK ME, I thought.

It was just then that I had a fleeting fantasy of running after the bus driver screaming “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?! GOD DAMN YOU, I PAY YOUR FUCKING SALARY, GET BACK HERE AND DO MY BIDDING!!!” But, probably for the sake of everyone around me, I threw that idea in my brain’s Ideas Not For Here bin, which had the freshly-crumpled idea “GO TO WORK WITHOUT PANTS” sitting in it from earlier.

I sat back down at the bench, now contemplating my options for the commute in to work. Option A was just saying “fuck it, I’m already down here waiting for the bus, and it can’t possibly be that much longer til the next one comes.” Option B was also saying “fuck it,” but followed by “why don’t I just sprint back up the hill in protest of Evil Bus Overlord Corporation and drive my ass to the office,” but the thought of 520 traffic getting increasingly horrific by the minute extinguished those crazy notions.

I’m a guy who loves his car, but I also love it enough to not abuse the shit out of the gas mileage in stop-and-go traffic for 45 minutes, resulting in me being late to my morning meeting.

Another five minutes goes by. I look around. Look at my phone. 8:10 a.m., it says.

Hmm.

Enough time to still miss the worst of the traffic at 8:30-9 if I get in and go now. Now now now!!!!!!!!!!!!

My brain was giving me the urge to take Option B. I was starting to feel ridiculous just sitting here waiting for more buses from another realm to come and taunt me. But I also felt conflicted.

I halfheartedly got up, started walking up the hill back to my house, while looking behind me constantly. The bus gods were not on my side today, so god knows what other forces of nature were out for my soul today. The squirrels were eying me suspiciously. but maybe the Monster hadn’t quite kicked in yet….

Just then, the noise of a large vehicle approached and got louder. I got half a block up the hill and looked behind me.

There was the bus, coming at of course the most inconvenient and annoying point it possibly could have.

“BALLS!” I shouted as I changed directions and charged down the hill. Good thing it wasn’t icy out this morning, otherwise I’d have taken an ambulance ride to the hospital as opposed to a bus ride to work.

Which is more preferable? Depends on the day, I imagine.

I stumbled down the hill and gracefully shot into the rear door of the bus. (File that one under “Sentences that sound dirty but really aren’t.”) Settling into a seat with no one next to me, I was amazed to see probably a third of the number of people on this bus as the first one that came by this morning.

Was that bus giving away free beer?! Were there strippers on board doling out handjobs?! God knows most of those bastards needed one, from the look of things. What I do know is the bus ride in was almost painfully routine that morning compared to my frenzied antics just to board one.